Constructing Defeat

As humans, we have a unique ability to remember our past and imagine our future. The shared memory of a group, and especially the shared memory of the nation, is known as collective memory. Despite the substantial research done on collective memory, the memory of defeat has not received much attention. Constructing Defeat represents a multifaceted project about the collective memory of defeat and how such memory is constructed and reconstructed over time in media and history textbooks, and how it shapes the outlook of people on a future engagement of their country in similar military conflicts. Deeply rooted in the scholarship on collective memory, collective memory of defeat, and collective future thinking, this book explores the underlying mechanisms by which such construction and reconstruction processes operate as illustrated by three modern defeats: the American War in Vietnam, the Soviet War in Afghanistan, and the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan. The enormous amount of data coming from the media of the country that experienced the defeat, as well as from the country that was the actual proxy enemy in the war and added a counterpoint angle to the analyses, revealed similar mechanisms underlying the process of memory construction both in Russia and the United States. Likewise, the analysis of history textbooks over a few decades after the end of the war has demonstrated similar trends in the two countries. The imagination of the future conflicts suggested a correlation between how individuals remember their past and how they imagine their nation's future.